China to Launch 3 Astronauts to Space Lab This Month

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China will launch its first manned mission to an orbiting space
laboratory in mid-June, according to state media reports and the
country's human spaceflight agency.

A Long March 2F rocket will launch three astronauts aboard a
Shenzhou 9 capsule for
China's first manned space docking at the mini-space station
Tiangong-1. The space lab module has been circling Earth unmanned
since its launch last year.

China's Shenzhou 9 mission will mark the fourth human spaceflight
for the country, which has been making steady advances since the
launch of Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei in 2003 on Shenzhou 5, the
country's first human spaceflight. China is the third country to
achieve human spaceflight after Russia and the United States.

Since its first flight, China has launched two more manned
missions, the two-man Shenzhou 6 flight and three-person Shenzhou
7 mission. Last September, China launched the Tiangong 1 module —
a prototype for a future space station — into orbit. That launch
was followed in November by the
unmanned Shenzhou 8 mission, which successfully docked a
capsule with the space laboratory twice during the test flight.

The Shenzhou 9 mission will mark China's first human spaceflight
to an orbiting module. Earlier this year, space program officials
said the mission could also mark the first launch of
China's first female astronaut, but a final decision on that
is pending, Xinhua reported.

A translation of an announcement released online by the China
Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSE), which oversees China's
human spaceflight program, stated that preparations of both the
rocket and Shenzhou 9 astronaut crew are going smoothly.

A series of spacecraft and rocket tests, as well as final mission
training, are underway ahead of the planned spaceflight, CMSE
officials said.

Like the Soyuz, Shenzhou vehicles carry up to three astronauts
and consist of a propulsion module, a crew capsule and an orbital
module. But unlike Russia's Soyuz, the orbital module of
Shenzhou spacecraft carries its own solar arrays and can remain
in space after its crew returns to Earth in the crew capsule.

China's Tiangong 1 ("Heavenly Palace 1") space laboratory module,
meanwhile, is a prototype space station designed to test the
technologies required for a much larger space station complex
currently under development. The Tiangong 1 module is 34 feet
long (10.4 meters), 11 feet wide (3.35 m) and weighed about 8.5
metric tons.

Chinese space officials have said the country is developing a
larger, 60-ton space station that will consist of several
modules. That space station is slated to be launched in 2020.

China is currently following a three-step space exploration
program that ultimately aims to
land an astronaut on the moon. According to a white paper
released by the Chinese government in December, the country plans
to launch a series of robotic moon landers and a lunar
sample-return mission by 2016.

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